3 ms·

What alternative do we have?

grecy 11y ago
I think we should start making decisions based around the understanding that we probably don't understand the full implications of what we're doing. i.e. We don't really know for certain what will happen if we seed clouds with nitrogen to alter the weather - so let's not (in reality we are doing this) and We don't know for sure if these hormones we're injecting into livestock have down-the-line health consequences for the people eating them, so we shouldn't do that. We should stop messing with stuff we really don't understand, and actually don't even need to be messing with - leave well enough alone.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Well, the EU has institutionalized that approach to regulatory decision-making under the rubric of the precautionary principle. Likewise, environmental review is increasingly common in planning/permitting contexts. But we have to have some sort of medium - an overabundance of caution ends with paralysis as we might avoid doing anything new due to the difficulty of adequately predicting the outcome.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  If we did that, we'd still be riding horses. Mistakes are inherent to progress; we aren't going to ban progress because we don't know, you acquire knowledge by doing and making mistakes.
  - grecy 11y ago
    I agree with you, and I want to see us continue to make progress, though I don't think we need to be injecting nitrogen into clouds so people can have better skiing. That's not progress, that's excess.
    - gnaritas 11y ago
      > That's not progress, that's excess. Says you, those wanting to ski have a different opinion, who are you to prevent other people from deciding what they consider progress? You sound like a Luddite from old England railing against technology.
      - grecy 11y ago
        > who are you to prevent other people from deciding what they consider progress? Obviously it's not up to me personally, but I'm someone that cares about the future, and not messing with things we don't understand. >* You sound like a Luddite from old England railing against technology.* That's an interesting thing to say, as I'm a Software Engineer, and one of the most "techie" people I know.
        gnaritas 11y ago
        > That's an interesting thing to say, as I'm a Software Engineer, and one of the most "techie" people I know. And yet your default opinion is don't touch things we don't understand, which prevents us from ever understanding them; you must see how illogical that is.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  As anigbrowl implied, the name for what you describe is the "precautionary principle", which has its criticisms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Critic... We absolutely should use the best theories we have to try to predict outcomes of our actions, and apply them incrementally instead of globally where possible. But sometimes more damage is caused by avoiding risk (time wasted planning, lives lost that could have been saved, etc.) than would be lost if the experiment in question goes wrong. Often the only way to "know for sure" is to do something and see what happens.

grecy 11y ago

I think we should start making decisions based around the understanding that we probably don't understand the full implications of what we're doing. i.e. We don't really know for certain what will happen if we seed clouds with nitrogen to alter the weather - so let's not (in reality we are doing this) and We don't know for sure if these hormones we're injecting into livestock have down-the-line health consequences for the people eating them, so we shouldn't do that. We should stop messing with stuff we really don't understand, and actually don't even need to be messing with - leave well enough alone.

anigbrowl 11y ago
Well, the EU has institutionalized that approach to regulatory decision-making under the rubric of the precautionary principle. Likewise, environmental review is increasingly common in planning/permitting contexts. But we have to have some sort of medium - an overabundance of caution ends with paralysis as we might avoid doing anything new due to the difficulty of adequately predicting the outcome.
gnaritas 11y ago
If we did that, we'd still be riding horses. Mistakes are inherent to progress; we aren't going to ban progress because we don't know, you acquire knowledge by doing and making mistakes.
- grecy 11y ago
  I agree with you, and I want to see us continue to make progress, though I don't think we need to be injecting nitrogen into clouds so people can have better skiing. That's not progress, that's excess.
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    > That's not progress, that's excess. Says you, those wanting to ski have a different opinion, who are you to prevent other people from deciding what they consider progress? You sound like a Luddite from old England railing against technology.
    - grecy 11y ago
      > who are you to prevent other people from deciding what they consider progress? Obviously it's not up to me personally, but I'm someone that cares about the future, and not messing with things we don't understand. >* You sound like a Luddite from old England railing against technology.* That's an interesting thing to say, as I'm a Software Engineer, and one of the most "techie" people I know.
      - gnaritas 11y ago
        > That's an interesting thing to say, as I'm a Software Engineer, and one of the most "techie" people I know. And yet your default opinion is don't touch things we don't understand, which prevents us from ever understanding them; you must see how illogical that is.
nitrogen 11y ago
As anigbrowl implied, the name for what you describe is the "precautionary principle", which has its criticisms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Critic... We absolutely should use the best theories we have to try to predict outcomes of our actions, and apply them incrementally instead of globally where possible. But sometimes more damage is caused by avoiding risk (time wasted planning, lives lost that could have been saved, etc.) than would be lost if the experiment in question goes wrong. Often the only way to "know for sure" is to do something and see what happens.